DermTV YouTube Viewer Questions - February 2012

Welcome to the final segment of DermTV viewer question week for February 2012. Today’s episode will feature questions from DermTV YouTube viewers.

The first question comes from Pretty Bunny, I love that name. “Dr. Schultz you’re amazing, I even bought your book and I love it!” with a nice smiley face- thank you Pretty Bunny. “I’d like to ask you about flaky skin, I have combination/oily skin in my twenties, still have flaky skin at some parts of my face and it becomes exaggerated whenever I wear foundation, what should I do?” The reason it’s becoming exaggerated is for the same reason that women use mascara. You use mascara on your eyelashes to coat them, make them look longer, fuller, more apparent. If you have flaky skin, and you put make-up on, the make-up is coating those flakes; it’s exaggerating them, it’s making them look even worse. So the real issue is removing the flakes and that’s what in general exfoliation is all about, getting rid of the extra dead cells that have accumulated, that are hanging on and they get in the way. Depending on where the flakes are, if they’re on your cheeks they probably just need regular exfoliation but sometimes those flakes are right next to the nose or in the eyebrows or in-between the eyebrows and some of those flakes are actually caused by excess dead skin coming off from the inflammation of dandruff or seborrhea in which case over the counter products like 1% hydrocortisone or even ketoconazolecream can treat the dandruff as can even dandruff shampoos on your face. But the bottom line is, if you have flakes on your skin and your putting make-up on, your going to coat those flakes and exaggerate them. You need to gently remove those flakes either by chemically dissolving them with an exfoliant or by controlling whatever condition on your skin is causing the flaking.

Ms. A. Alitz says, “I love the viewer questions sessions, can you use natural oils as an antioxidant. If so, which one can you recommend, argon, grape seed, etc? I love all antioxidants; the problem with the essential oils is the chemicals in these oils are not necessarily accessible to be absorbed into the skin. So just because these oils contain very good ingredients, such as grape seed congaing resveratrol and polyphenols, just putting that oil on your skin doesn’t mean that the active antioxidant ingredient can be absorbed into the skin. So rather than relying on oils which are rich in antioxidant ingredients as a source for penetrating those antioxidants ingredients into your skin, I recommend buying skincare products which have been demonstrated to be effective topical antioxidants that have those ingredients in them rather than just using the plain oils.

RedLips402, “Dr. Schultz, can you talk about the side effects of Latisse? Does it darken your iris? Love the new video format, thank you for answering our questions.” You’re so welcome, thanks for your questions. Latisse is truly a wonder at increasing the length and the width and the thickness of eyelashes, it works very well. Generally speaking, when it’s used as directed there are virtually no side effects. On rare occasion, the skin of the lid can become a little bit pink and a little irritated and in that case you’re getting a little irritation from Latisse and you should stop using it. But the issue about iris discoloration really does not apply to topical use of Latisse when it’s put on the skin. According to the manufacturer those situations where blue or light colored eyes actually became brown only happened when the chemical in Lastisse was put into the eye as it was supposed to be when the formulation with active ingredient in Latisse was being used to treat glaucoma. It as never been shown that topical use of Latisse on skin for your lids for your eyelashes has ever caused darkening of the iris. So really, Latisse is quite safe, rare cases of a little bit of irritation pink, reddening of the skin, so if it happens to you don’t use it but I have never seen, never heard of, never seen reported darkening of the iris from proper use of Latisse for eyelashes.

BunnyBudget88, “Dr. Schultz, using a clairsonic has been proven to be more effective than using just your hands but would a manual face brush work just as well?” I love clairisonic, especially for people who love electric toothbrushes. If you like the experience of an electric toothbrush, where you feel you’re doing something extra, you feel it, you hear it, you see it, clairisonic is then a great tool to help clean your face. In terms of can an actual hand or manual face brush work just as well? Probably not because the clairisonic is giving you so many revolutions and so much controlled application of the cleansing brush, with a manual brush I think it’s much harder to be able to push it over your skin and in the same controlled fashion, repetitively in the same and different areas doing the same amount, I think it’s harder, I think they both work, I’m not sure that it will do exactly the job that clairisonic does but it may do a good enough job for you. So regardless, whether you like using your hands or using a manual face brush or the clairisonic you can still get very effective cleansing.

The last question for today is a very interesting question and apparently was a very popular question and that question is, “what is your skin care routine?” What is my skin care routine is the question. Well, i'm very happy to tell you what I do for my skin and as you would expect since I have my own skin care line, I use the products in my own skin care line. On DermTV I don’t discuss that brand, the BeautyRx skincare products but obviously that’s what I use for myself. So I’ll tell you what products I use and how I use them. I use a cleanser and a toner twice a day. The cleanser is for oily combination skin because even at this age I still have oily skin and I use an oil free toner and alcohol free toner to remove any residual oils and debris on the skin. In the morning I apply a chemfree SPF with an SPF of 50 because the particular product I’m using has such fine micronized particles that they actually act almost a little bit like talc in delaying the oil break through that I have with my oily skin. In the evening I use my cleanser and toner again and I use on alternate nights 10% glycolic pads alternating with the 15% glycolic gel, you all know how passionate I am about exfoliation and the importance of using exfoliants daily. Then I use a Vitamin-C product that contains methylsilanol ascorbate and tetrahexyl ascorbate as my anti-oxidant. One more thing, in the winter in the morning on top of the sunscreen I will often use an oil free water based moisturizer just on my cheeks to help protect my skin from the harsh cold winter wind. So there you have it, that’s what I use, that’s what Dr. Schultz uses for his skin.

That’s it for this months viewer questions week and don’t forget the subjects for so many DermTV episodes come from your questions which are great so please keep sending them in and I’ll keep answering as many of them as I can.